So I watched a bit and it didn't take long to see the people trot out a ruthless black man who may have been responsible for Bush getting the presidency a second time: he was both the head of voting and the head of a committee to re-elect Bush. He manipulated the voting laws so as to exclude Kerry voters. He claimed as did others it's not only right to eliminate fraud (studies show there is none) but asking for ID is nothing more than you are asked to do when you get on a plane, go to a bank, or do a number of middle class things. First of all these demands are hard on people and exclude those w/o picture IDs. Second, the states are not making it easy at all for people to get IDs, much less two photo ones. The process is set up to prevent you getting these because you have to have an ID to get an ID, and the atmosphere is intimidating.

Beyond this: one thing I've noticed is the open admission not only suppressing the vote will "allow" Romney to win, as if it's a right, but the comments repeatedly allude to how there is something illegitimate in black and Hispanic Americans voting. To these Republicans the only "real" Americans with the right to vote are whites and a male vote much more valid than a female one. They come near to explicitly stating the latter too. We can see how anti-immigration talk and laws are a subset of this attitude and how it underlies the mass incarceration and disenfranchisement of black men. Jim Crow back again in a new form when you consider the move to privatize the schools and turn whatever is left into inferior schools with teachers w/o rights or certificates into factories producing docile workers.

The wealthy and privileged know they do not have an agenda the average American wants. The average American wants affordable health care, good schools, real jobs (and knows gov't is one place good jobs are provided), the social security they worked all their lives to get, most women are pro-choice (and all but a couple of Republican ones pro-choice), so the way to win is suppress the vote.

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I'm with those who find American politics full of really scary people,which doesn't bode well for us in the rest of the world.

Since Sylvia has already mentioned Republican attempts to discredit or even disenfranchise Black and Hispanic voters, normally more in the Democratic camp, I thought I'd mention that the Texas courts have at least just torpedoed the changes the Republicans wanted to introduce as to voter ID.

As it happens, I saw this kind of legislation lambasted in an episode of The Newsroom just last night.

I mention it because one of the other dire effects of rabidly right-wing, populist Republicanism is that it seems to have reduced more liberal voices to the same kind of strident, soapbox tactics without balance, nuance or subtlety. I really liked a lot of Sorkin's work on The West Wing, for example, but not this. They've also just started showing the shortlived series, 'Harry's Law', with Kathy Bates over here, a Kelly series with liberal ideals, but even more terrible, soapbox-like execution.